WASHINGTON, D.C. – In testimony before a House subcommittee in early March, Lynn Jungwirth, executive director of the Watershed Research and Training Center at Hayfork, California, became the latest in a very long line of people to state the obvious: Congress could do a lot more to mitigate climate change if it would first embrace more active, science-based management of federal forests.

Ms Jungwirth, who is executive director the Watershed Research and Training Center at Hayfork, California, made seven key points in her March 3 testimony before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, the most important one being that healthy, resilient forests sequester carbon – and that removing dead and dying trees from dense forests is one of the cheapest strategies the government can employ in its efforts to combat climate change.

“Climate change discussions in the U.S. have been framed by the approaches and agreements that came out of international negotiations of the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change,” Ms Jungwirth began. These approaches have been dominated by an urban industrial perspective that focuses on transportation, electricity generation and large-scale manufacturing as the major source of man-caused greenhouse gases and seeks to reduce emissions from those sources as the pivotal strategies for combating climate change.”

In classic understatement, Ms Jungwirth then turned to rural values and perspectives that have been largely ignored by lawmakers and those who write the often misdirected rules and regulations that flow from legislation.

“The rural, natural systems perspective is somewhat different,” she observed, “perhaps because rural communities and landscapes are experiencing the ecological stresses of climate change, including insect pandemics, intense wildfires, degraded fisheries, invasive species and ecosystem conversion at an observable rate. We don’t actually need scientists to measure the change in climate; we are living it. We see the changes on the landscapes, the issues for forest management and policy, and we are helping develop responses and solutions. However, the way we see the issues and the solutions don’t neatly fit the urban-industrial intellectual construct or the existing policy mechanisms or carbon markets.”

The role active forest management can play in reducing greenhouse gases has, according to Ms Jungwirth, been the focal point of considerable political controversy, in part because forest management – which includes thinning and harvesting trees – is itself the subject of value laden controversy. Moreover, measuring carbon storage and release in forests is not easy, especially when it involves thinning and biomass removal, essential steps in the process of reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire in western federal forests.

Ms Jungwirth, who has been a community activist for more than 20 years, has been one of the leading promoters of thinning and forest restoration work on northern California’s Trinity National Forest, which has in recent years been the scene of some of the West’s most destructive wildfires. She has also lead the way locally in identifying commercial uses for small diameter trees that are often hosts for insects and diseases, major underlying contributors to the downward spiral of increasingly frequent and destructive wildfires the West has experienced over the last 15 years.

In her testimony, Ms Jungwirth referenced scientific studies that estimate that wildfires account for about 30 percent of all global greenhouse gases, a startling number that has left many wondering why climate change activists continue to argue against crediting active forest management for its role in storing carbon in trees for long periods of time. Yes some activists have even resisted attempts to measure greenhouse gas emissions from forest fires. But one California agency - the California North Coast Air Quality Management District – did estimate emissions from two major California wildfires, the 2002 Megram Fire, which burned 100,000 acres on the Trinity National Forest and the 2008 Trinity Fire Complex, which burned 200,000 acres on the Trinity.

“The estimates were 1.5 million vehicle year equivalents for the Megram Fire and two million vehicle years for the Trinity,” Ms Jungwirth told subcommittee members.  “Vehicle years provides an urban frame of reference for greenhouse gas emissions. For rural communities, however, the frame is weeks of smoke so thick you can’t see across the street, increased chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in our elders, salmon streams full of sediment, rivers and ponds filled with debris, the decline of our tourism-recreation industry, the loss of our precious timber resources and, this year, the deaths of 11 firefighters. These are not the fires of our childhood when low intensity fires were ‘skunk around’ in the undergrowth, herded by local ranchers and the Forest Service. Those fires were fires of renewal. Today’s fires are those of ecological, social and economic destruction.”

Whether Ms Jungwirth testimony will prompt Congress to rethink its’ reluctance to embrace more active management regimes for western federal forests remains to be seen, but at least one observer had high praise for her candor.

“It was quite a piece of work,” said long-time forest policy observer, Jim Petersen, after reading her testimony. Petersen, who heads the non-profit Evergreen Foundation, has for more than 20 years been one of the most outspoken defenders of active forest management in western federal forests. “Ms Jungwirth said some very important things in her testimony that I sincerely hope will help light the way to a more enlightened set of federal forest policies. We have nearly 100 years of scientific research that demonstrate the benefits of routine thinning and stand tending work in dry-site mixed conifer forests throughout the West. The last missing piece in this puzzle is the political will necessary to move away from the misbegotten notion that we ought to leave our forests to the vagaries of nature.”